BY HAROLD SCHINDLER THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
It may not have been a thunderclap, but Orson Pratt's public acknowledgment in 1852 that
Mormons practiced plural marriage came as a stunning disclosure that was felt wherever the
church had a presence.
The word caused scarcely a ripple in Utah, where most Mormons were aware that church
leaders had been practicing polygamy for more than a decade, though in Europe the ripple
became a shudder of some consequence.
Richard S. Van Wagoner, in his Mormon Polygamy, A History, pointed to the remarks of
missionary T.B.H. Stenhouse, who reported that during the first six months that the doctrine was
preached openly, 1,776 British Saints quit the church. Other observers described the reaction as a
``bombshell'' with opposition to Mormonism in many cases resulting in mob violence and
increased harassment of church members as far away as ``the islands of the sea; from Denmark,
Sweden and Norway; from distant India as well as from England.''
The situation for missionaries was especially awkward. John Taylor, for instance, in July 1850
defiantly denied the doctrine in a public discussion in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, calling such
charges slanderous and worse.
``We are accused of polygamy, and actions the most indelicate, obscene and disgusting, such
that none but a corrupt and depraved heart could have contrived,'' he said in righteous
indignation, while in Great Salt Lake City, his six wives waited anxiously for his return. (Taylor
would take a seventh plural wife in 1856.)
The subject was like tinder in a parched land. Those who questioned, embraced or cursed the
doctrine could not even put the correct name to it. It was not ``polygamy'' (the practice of having
two or more spouses, men or women, at the same time), but ``polygyny'' (having two or more
wives at once).
Barely a year after Taylor's debate in Boulogne and fully a year before Pratt's speech, four of
five federal officials appointed to office in Utah Territory turned on their heels and abandoned
their posts, complaining that Gov. Young would not cooperate with them. Labeled ``the
runaways,'' the four wrote President Millard Fillmore that ``plurality of wives'' was openly
avowed and practiced in the territory and ``so universal is this practice that very few if any
leading men in that community can be found who have not more than one wife each . . . and
some of them . . . as many as twenty or thirty.''
It was this atmosphere intensified by the urging of the more cool-headed among the hierarchy
that persuaded Young it was time for an ``official proclamation.'' He asked Pratt to make the
historic announcement at a special conference on Sunday, Aug. 29, 1852.
The assignment was unexpected and prompted Pratt to preface his remarks by saying, ``I have
not been in the habit of publicly speaking upon this subject and it is rather new ground to the
inhabitants of the United States, not only to them, but to a portion of the inhabitants of Europe. . .
. It is well known, however, to the congregation before me, that the Latter-day Saints have
embraced the doctrine of a plurality of wives, as part of their religious faith.''
But, he emphasized, ``It is not, as many have supposed, a doctrine embraced by them to gratify
the carnal lusts and feelings of men; that is not the object of the doctrine.''
He stood at the Tabernacle pulpit for some two hours summarizing the revelation received in
1843 by the church's founder and first prophet, Joseph Smith, and closed by asking, ``What does
the Lord intend to do with this people? He intends to make them a kingdom of Kings and Priests,
a kingdom unto himself, or in other words a kingdom of Gods, if they will hearken to his law.
There will be many who will not hearken, there will be the foolish among the wise who will not
receive the new and everlasting covenant [plural marriage] in its fullness, and they never will
attain to their exaltation, they never will be counted worthy to hold the sceptre of power over a
numerous progeny, that shall multiply themselves without end, like the sand upon the seashore.''
Pratt did not overlook the legal constraints that might hinder acceptance of the doctrine. Early
in his remarks he commented, ``I think, if I am not mistaken, that the Constitution gives the
privilege to all inhabitants of this country, of the free exercise of their religious notions, and the
freedom of their faith, and the practice of it. Then if it can be proven . . . that the Latter-day
Saints have actually embraced, as a part and portion of their religion, the doctrine of a plurality of
wives, it is constitutional.''
That argument frustrated opposition for years, until the sheer weight of public opinion brought
it crashing down with the passage of various anti-polygamy measures.
After Pratt had fulfilled his role as delineator of the doctrine, Young strode to the pulpit and
added his affirmation to the announcement. It is a principle we believe in, he said, ``And I tell
you, for I know it -- it will sail over and ride triumphantly above all the prejudice and priestcraft
of the day; it will be fostered and believed in by the more intelligent portions of the world, as one
of the best doctrines ever proclaimed to any people.''
Influential Eastern newspapers railed against the doctrine and those who practiced it. The New
York Mirror denounced Mormonism as an ``immoral excrescence.'' The New York Herald wrote
of harems, whores and concubines. And in 1856, John C. Fremont ran on the new Republican
Party's presidential platform calling for the end of polygamy and slavery from American society
as the ``twin relics of barbarism.''
Young's answer to these criticisms was to send missionaries to Washington, New York,
California and Missouri to set up periodicals and newspapers to advocate and defend the faith --
including the newly proclaimed plurality doctrine.
Orson Pratt started The Seer in Washington in January 1853; Erastus Snow had the St. Louis
Luminary operating by November 1854; Taylor established The Mormon in New York in the
same neighborhood as the Herald and the Tribune in February 1855; and George Q. Cannon
founded the Western Standard in San Francisco in early 1856. This group of editors produced a
steady flow of rebuttals to anti-Mormon stories published across the country.
In the first issue of The Mormon, Taylor had this to say in an editorial on polygamy: ``It may
be expected that something should be said by us, in relation to this matter. This we undertake as
cheerfully as any other task; for we are not ashamed . . . to declare we are polygamists. . . . We do
this calmly, seriously and understandingly; after due deliberation, careful examination and close
investigation of its principles and bearings; religiously, socially, morally, physically and
politically; we unhesitatingly pronounced our full and implicit faith in this principle, as
emanating from God, and that under his direction it would be a blessing to the human family.
``We as eternal beings believe in eternal laws, covenants and unions, emanating from God, and
based upon purity and virtue. We are not united only `until death do us part,' but expect an eternal
union, in the eternal worlds, based upon living, intelligent, eternal principles; our gospel, our
religion, our covenants and marriages; all our acts refer to this; and no one can detest the
loathsome, degraded, corrupt and miserable state of the world, in relation to lewdness,
lasciviousness, adultery and debauchery, more than we do; and were women treated with us as
they are in thousands of instances here, it would cost a man his head.''
When a move for statehood provoked anti-polygamy legislation in Washington, the pinch in
Salt Lake City became a painful squeeze. The Edmunds Act of 1882, intended to disenfranchise
polygamists and deny them public office and jury duty, cost them dearly. Those who fought were
relegated to a life of hiding on the Mormon underground. ``More than 1,300 Mormon men and a
few women were jailed for polygamy, `unlawful cohabitation' or both,'' according to historian
Van Wagoner.
And in the end, financial ruin faced The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and long
prison sentences loomed for stubborn adherents to the forbidden practice. It brought about the
Wilford Woodruff Manifesto in 1890 renouncing the doctrine.